BlizzCon 2013 is just two months away, and we know everyone’s excited to see what’s in store. Even if you’re not attending in person, you can experience of the sights and sounds of the show from home with the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, available to order now at www.blizzcon.com. Now you can be a part of Blizzard’s epic two-day gaming convention without having to wear pants—unless, of course, you’ve invited friends over to watch.

The BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will give you live online HD coverage of the event, taking place Friday, November 8 and Saturday, November 9 at the Anaheim Convention Center. You’ll get access to both days of the show via two exclusive channels, including the developer panels, exclusive interviews, community contests, and the closing ceremony, along with on-demand replays and DVR functionality. Note that Virtual Ticket coverage will be available in English language only, so keep that in mind before you purchase.

Bonus Loot

Since we know everyone likes epic loot, anyone who orders a Virtual Ticket will also receive this year’s BlizzCon-exclusive in-game goodies for World of Warcraft®, StarCraft II, Diablo III, and Hearthstone™: Heroes of Warcraft™ (details coming soon).

You’ll also get access to an exclusive, limited-time online pre-BlizzCon merchandise sale featuring a selection of commemorative items that will be available for purchase at the show.* This special pre-BlizzCon sale is scheduled to take place over a 5-day period in the weeks leading up to the show, and will be followed by a public sale offering a more limited selection of items. We’ll have more details on the pre-sale in the coming weeks.

Free WCS and Warcraft eSports Tournament Streams

Even if you don’t purchase a Virtual Ticket, you’ll still be able to catch plenty of BlizzCon action online for free. Coverage of the BlizzCon opening ceremony and this year’s BlizzCon eSports tournaments—including the StarCraft II World Championship Series Global Finals and the World of Warcraft Arena Global Invitational—will be streamed for free in HD at www.blizzcon.com and the official WCS website.

*While supplies last. All orders placed in the online pre-BlizzCon merchandise sale will be shipped from the United States; international shipping rates may apply.

Connected Realms Update

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We wanted to update everyone on the next steps for the implementation of Connected Realms. We plan to begin the rollout of this feature with just a couple of realms, and have determined that the first realms that will be connected will be Boulderfist and Bloodscalp—we’ll provide another update once we’ve finalized the date. Beyond that, we are in the process of determining a complete realm-connection schedule, and will be releasing more details as we progress.

For more information on Connected Realms, please read the preview blog post here.

Looking at the two realms above though it seems they're both fairly (3:1) Horde dominated. My data may well be out of date though. Is faction balance not an important consideration for PvP servers?
I think it's best to take outside data with a grain of salt. I don't have data on the faction balance on those realms myself, but it's worth noting that often enough, outside data is skewed a bit from what we have.

Only request I have on this feature is that RP servers get merged with other RP servers.
We intend to keep like matched with like as much as we possibly can. I think once we get a "complete" list and schedule out to everyone, there will be less theory crafting or conspiracy theories ... then again.. maybe not.

We'll just try to keep everyone in the know as well as we can.

Hey Nethaera i have a question.... along with the type of server being matched together, will evening out horde to alliance ratios be another goal of connected realms? so a realm with that is horde favored be matched with another alliance favored server to bring the two together?

I'm not sure as of yet. The caveat to doing this is there's no guarantee that once those realms were connected, that the balance wouldn't skew again. We'll see how it goes though.

A Pandaren Legend: Lorewalker Cho should no longer confuse Worgen and Alliance Pandaren players as being part of the Horde while retelling their story.

A Time-Lost Treasure: This quest no longer has a faction requirement with Order of the Cloud Serpent.

The Path of the Mistwalker: Completing this daily quest now awards 250 reputation with the Emperor Shaohao faction. In addition, Southsea Plunderer and Southsea Lookout elites now award credit towards completing this quest.

The Temple of the Jade Serpent: Fixed an issue where players were unable to move after the cutscene.

Kor'kron related NPCs and creatures in Northern Barrens should be neutral to players below level 85 once more.

Highwind Albatross already carrying a player will no longer have its flight path interrupted when attacked by other players. Players who have been picked up by an Albatross can still interrupt its flight by attacking it.

Lil' Canny is back after a tune-up and is wandering around in the Shrine of Seven Stars once more.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

Siege of Orgrimmar

Siegecrafter Blackfuse

Players standing on the conveyor belt should now be able to see Shockwave Missile and its damage effect regardless of the Shockwave Missile's position in the room.

Garrosh Hellscream

Farseer Wolf Rider can no longer be hit multiple times by the same Iron Star.

Kor'kron Warbringer can no longer deal critical strikes to players.

Items

Fixed an issue where many mana regeneration drinks was not regenerating mana.

For Death Knights, the Endurance of Niuzao effect from the Qian-Le legendary cloak should now activate before triggering Purgatory.

Timeless Isle

The Celestial Court spirit walls no longer close while engaging the Celestials.

The Release Spirit prompt should no longer pop up after performing a reloadui after dying and resurrecting.

Players dying and releasing while inside the Siege of Orgrimmar raid instance should no longer see the loading bar multiple times before arriving at the graveyard.

Tracked quests, achievements, and tutorials should now be saving correctly after relogging.

Shaohao Rep Gain

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

One hotfix we're applying that should help a bit:

Completing the daily quest "Path of the Mistwalker" now awards a player with 250 reputation with Emperor Shaohao.

Just for perspective, our intent with the implementation of this rep was to focus on the more difficult creatures on the island, as well as the ones that thematically are the most threatening to the island's residents.

It's definitely different from some of the more recent reputations added to the game, and harkens a bit more back to reps like Timbermaw or Hydraxian -- though we'd argue is still less painful.

Gaining Shaohao rep is largely for flavor and not something everyone is going to want, and certainly not need, to do. That said, we'll keep an eye on community progression and feedback, and make further adjustments if we feel it's necessary.

Not enough npc's in that tiny zone also, single target classes like rogues should get more rep from a kill than say a hunter or a caster who can kill 5 at a time while I can only do one target at a time. I don't mind grinding but don't like having to fight for targets with casters who can target multiple npc's at once and I cant in a tiny little space. Although having stealth I can at least hit one and be killing it while they attack it for 3 seconds not knowing I already tagged it first ... a little payback at least. But they still have the other 4 or 5 to deal with anyways I can have my one at a time.
One of the biggest challenges any MMO developer faces -- you can find evidence of this in virtually every MMO on the market -- is designing open-world content that isn't completely stifled by huge populations when it's first released, but also isn't a ghost town with stuff that's nigh impossible to do as the general population moves onto other things.

We understand Timeless Isle has a lot of that going on as loads of people login to check out the new patch, but we designed the island from the ground up in such a way to try and minimize both the overcrowding and ghost town effects as much as possible, even down to the actual size of the island itself.

And for those of us who completed the quest, but are still struggling with neutral? Will it retroactively assist us?
No, you won't retroactively be awarded rep based on changes made after the fact to how it's distributed. But yes, going forward completing this quest will award rep.

IMO the problem is that only Yaungols give rep. Make it so that every island creatures gives some rep and it will be fine.

You make something extremely hard/long/painful for its release and sometime later you make it super easy: 5.0 Reps, first steps of legendary Quest line, getting loot from past patches. and the excuse is " Oh oh, we've been monitoring the community and we are not satisfied with this so we gonna make it easier." or "We feel that served its purpose" Or something like that. Give your players some respect. I understand some of the reasons but I can't help but feeling I just lost a bunch of time doing that stuff. If you gonna change this rep DO IT NOW because there's already people working their asses for this and it will be frustrating if you make it easier in one or two months. Or don't change it and make it clear that you will not to. Thank you.
The first change happened within 48 hours of the patch going live. If we think there's a problem we'll take steps to address it.

But I'm not comfortable comparing this to 5.0 reps or the legendary questline. First, the changes made to them were mostly for very different reasons. The way so many reward systems tied together in 5.0 reps made it more difficult to address by applying a hotfix or two. It required patches. And the primary changes to the legendary questline have been calculated and gradual, to allow players an opportunity to catch up without having to repeatedly run content for which it's increasingly difficult to find groups, while also not trivializing the overall effort needed to complete the chain now.

You seem to be implying we should take a "nerf first, think about the implications later" approach. That's not good for the game or the community. If we make any mistakes in the process, it becomes a lot harder to take something away from players, and we want to avoid repeatedly swinging the pendulum to opposite extremes in that regard.

Ultimately, a lot of this feedback ends up being a little shorthand, not that it's being discounted entirely. But there a sense of, “There’s a thing I want and I don’t have it yet; fix it so I have it now,” going around. Shaohao rep definitely has a grind attached to it, but as other players will happily point out, there are a lot of other repeatable, random, and other mechanisms and systems at play that make the Isle as a whole very rewarding. If we gated all the good stuff behind the rep, that’d be a more serious concern, but it isn’t. The rep is just one progression among many parallel ones.

I can't help but view Thunder Island, Battlefield Barrens, and Timeless Isle as being three parts in a continuing experiment.
This is true to a large extent. We're trying out types of endgame content other than repeatable quests. Timeless Isle is the most direct "sandbox, evergreen" environment we've created so far. The Isle content as a whole isn't nearly as strict or linear as dailies. There are many things you can take at your own pace. Needless to say, we're very interested in the feedback -- not just what we're hearing now, but what we'll be hearing two months from now.

Resuming Flex Raids

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

There has been some confusion about a couple aspects of Flexible mode raiding which we’re hoping to clarify for you here:

If all members of a Flexible mode raid have killed specific bosses within a wing, when they queue up again the next day, they will begin where they left off.

Example: All 14 players in the raid on day one have defeated Immerseus, but only 12 continued on to take down the Fallen Protectors. If that same group of 14 were to re-queue for the same wing the following day, they would begin at the Protectors with Immerseus remaining defeated. If they returned with the original 12 that downed the first two bosses, they’d carry on to Norushen.

While Flexible mode will never scale in difficultly below 10 players, you can still queue up and begin clearing the instance with as few as 7 players in the raid.

Example: You have 9 guild members and friends who are online and ready to rock Flexible mode, but the other 5 members of the raid are running a bit behind. You can still form a raid group and queue for Flexible Siege of Orgrimmar, and then head inside to begin taking down trash as you wait for the others to log in.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Siege of Orgrimmar Flex DifficultyI honestly didn't have to really pay attention to anything, mechanics were harmless for the most part, if you simply respect Kill adds > Kill boss order bosses just fall over.
Siege of Orgrimmar has a much smoother progression than Throne of Thunder, so we expect most groups that were able to get even halfway through ToT to be able to deal with the first few bosses without too much trouble.

Secondly though, it sounds and -checking your gear- looks like Flex isn't for you, and you should stick to Normal/Heroic where you're already comfortable progressing. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Siege of Orgrimmar DifficultyI mean I was fine that SoO had catch up mechanics for the legendary quests...only natural given where we are...but common at least make it so you have to kill Garrosh for the bloody thing....
We thought it'd be cooler to actually be able to use the cloak while progressing in 5.4 content rather than get it when you're all done.

That brings me to the next point...so far the difficulty of SoO seems a joke. I feel like normal is under-tuned and it's like we were running flex. One shot first two
Tuning of the first few bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar is intentional. Keep going. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Legendary Cloak and Timeless Isle Accessblizz seems to think its funny to close off half of the timeless isle to anyone without the legendary cloak
It is correct that you need the legendary cloak to fight Fire-God Ordos. It's not half of the Timeless Isle. It's one boss -- literally one thing on the isle you can't access without the legendary cloak. You can still get to the area surrounding Ordos using the Albatrosses.

It wasn't designed this way to give us a laugh. The vast majority of the Timeless Isle is open to everyone at level 90, including the four celestials you can fight.

We feel that rewarding those who have invested time into the entire legendary quest chain with access to fight Ordos is justifiable. He's analogous to Oondasta and Galleon in terms of difficulty and loot quality, but isn't just another really rare spawn that can be zerged by everyone in the area, or friends being invited and summoned in.

The original implementations of Galleon and Oondasta were both a little problematic. We wanted to try out a different type of barrier to entry for players who want to fight this boss. And it's fitting that the people who have progressed through the legendary quest chain as it's unfolded, and completed the chain as soon as it was possible to do so (today), get access to him first.

After all, if you haven't been working on the legendary quest chain and/or aren't all that into raiding, it's probably not super important for you to fight this particular raid boss on the first day he's even in the game.

Fortunately you can still complete the legendary quest chain if you want access to the inner-sanctum where Ordos is hanging out (the area you defined as "half of the Timeless Isle"). And it's still perfectly viable to complete the quest chain with all of the updates to it in patch 5.4.

But seriously it's one boss you might want to do at least once or twice for some loot. You're not missing out on much and you can always just like Goblin Glider over to the area to see it (unless they fixed that since the last time I was on the PTR which is highly likely).
It's possible to get to the area where Ordos is through select means, but there's a frequent pulse that kicks everyone without a cloak out of the area.

It is really a way to make casual gamers feel they are worthless yet again.
You can absolutely be a casual gamer and still get the legendary cloak. It was specifically designed to work that way (i.e. items that drop in raids still drop in LFR).

I consider myself a very casual gamer and have still been steadily making progress on the quest chain, none of which was done through anything higher than LFR raid difficulty. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Mogu Rune of Fate Cost
The basic items that drop from everywhere on the Timeless Isle are 496. Quite a few people have reported filling every slot on an alt in the first day with these 496 items, and that's also the ilvl requirement for Siege of Orgrimmar LFR. So even with no other gear from other sources or upgrades, you will be able to jump straight into Siege of Orgrimmar just by playing around, exploring, and killing stuff on the Timeless Isle for a while, which really makes Mogu Runes of Fate quite unnecessary if you're just looking to progress through the new content.

When Mogu Runes of Fate were introduced, Elder Charms of Good Fortune were changed to drop on the Isle of Thunder. They drop randomly and you may get 20 in one day or 0. This time we're taking some of the randomness out of it and simply allowing you to be on the island and constantly be picking up Timeless Coins and working toward purchasing Mogu Runes of Fate.

But as I said if you've seen all you want of ToT and are just looking to progress, just getting those gear tokens off the island are probably a better bet.

So we brought up your guys' feedback to the designers about this just a bit ago, everyone agrees Mogu Runes of Fate are too expensive, and we'll be adjusting the cost in an upcoming hotfix that should probably go out today or tomorrow. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Timeless Isle monsters - Um...ouchIs anyone else finding that these monsters are extraordinarily hard to kill and they hit like a mac truck?
They're definitely challenging. There are a variety of additional buffs and such on the Isle that should help. The mobs also have visual cues on their more damaging "ouch" worthy abilities as well that should help you with avoiding that damage and taking them down. It also doesn't hurt to grab a friend or two to help you out if they happen to be around and available.

Brute-force, no-thought-required developer solution for MMO gameplay: make the content suck so much that you're forced to group. Because Blizzard says grouping is fun. So if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.
This is incorrect. The intent of the island is that you can solo most of the content. My suggestion to group with someone was simply advice for those that may be finding difficulty with them to make it a less (potentially) frustrating experience. It wasn't meant as anything else.

It's also worth noting that we're still keeping an eye on things now that the patch is live and a larger pool of people are experiencing the content. I'm sure that if it's determined that adjustments need made, they will be. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvE Realms - World PvP and Timeless Islethe point is, that we shouldn't be able to be flagged on TI, it should be neutral territory not contested.
Plenty of people that are on PvE servers like to engage in PvP sometimes, as you apparently can tell by the number of people flagged on the island on your realm. Avoiding flagging yourself is usually fairly simple, but mistakes do happen, and you may die, and you may need to wait for the 5min PvP flag to disappear. Just be a bit careful about what you're clicking on/targeting and you shouldn't have any problems. (AoE attacks will not flag you unless you have a flagged player targeted) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.4 PvP Gear
I'll jump in because I think I understand the question:

when the conquest gear becomes honor, will that conquest gear that will be honor be upgraded into better honor gear come next week? o.O
The season 13 Tyrannical gear was changed to be available for Honor so that the new season 14 gear could become the gear purchasable for Conquest.

So the answer to your question, if I understand it correctly, is no. There won't be any changes to the stats or item level on the season 13 Tyrannical or season 12 Malevolent sets when the new season 14 gear becomes available. You will need to follow the normal upgrade path for your gear, buying the Honor gear (Tyrannical) and then replacing those pieces with the Conquest gear (Grievous). I hope that this answers your question, please feel free to rephrase it to make the question more clear if I didn't. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.4 PvP ChangesBlizzard said it was 10% damage reduction not a portion of resilience.GG inc PVE TRINKETS ONCE again
While not being exactly 10% damage reduction, it's still a rather hefty decrease in damage done to your character. When you consider the amount of damage reduction that the trinkets provide, coupled with the additional ten item levels and the fact that the procs and stats you see on the PvE trinkets don't properly reflect what they do when in a PvP instance, you may feel differently about how powerful these trinkets are.

You have to remember that all of the PvE items will be down-scaled to 496 Ilvl, increasing by one Ilvl per week up to a maximum of 512. So to take for example the PvE trinkets that decrease the duration of six of your major cooldowns; while the number may be reasonably high at first glance, in PvP the decrease is only around 20%. The same goes for the other trinkets which have special procs, all of them have their effects greatly reduced in a PvP instance and as such their effect will not be as major as you may think.

We'll be sure to continue monitoring the state of PvE items in PvP. If we find that a certain item is affecting gameplay in a major way, we’ll make adjustments as we deem them necessary.

PvE items are scaled down to 496 ilevel and PvP to 512 so doubt that PvE trinkets will be better
This is actually incorrect, PvP items have no cap in patch 5.4. This means that Conquest gear will keep its 522 Ilvl stats but PvE items on the other hand will be lowered to a 496 Ilvl cap. Every week after the new season commences, that cap will increase by 1 to a maximum of 512 which it will stay at for the rest of the season.

So you're correct that PvP gear will have a higher Ilvl in instanced PvP, but the information you provided was incorrect. I hope that this clears up any misunderstandings and explains how the Ilvl ceiling works in patch 5.4. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Path of the Last Emperor in 5.4
You'll still get the quest after you've done Blood in the Snow and Dark Heart of Pandaria (as a part of the quests from Lorewalker Cho.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

AskMrRobot UpdatedAskMrRobot has been updated for Patch 5.4, so get started picking out your upgrades! They also have a new addon which will let you export information from the site for use in game.

Gamepedia Next Gen Console Games Giveaway
Our friends over at Gamepedia are giving away some games for next gen consoles and other prizes to wiki contributors.

This Week Only - 50% Off Mists of Pandaria

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

Pandaria needs you! Garrosh Hellscream’s rise to tyrannical power can’t go unchecked any longer, and heroes from both factions need your help to end his evil reign. If you haven’t upgraded to Mists of Pandaria yet, now’s the perfect time—because this week only, Mists of Pandaria is 50% off. Hurry, though—this sale ends September 17, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Blizzard Mailing Free Copies Mists of Pandaira
It seems Blizzard is mailing out copies of Mists of Pandaria and a free week of gameplay to old subscribers to let them try the expansion. If you want to take advantage of the free seven days and have been inactive for 30 days or more on on 8/27/13, see the official promo site.

Those who don't spend money on WoW get a free copy of the game. What about the loyal players who keep bleeding money all over Blizzard, what do they get? I wouldn't mind a refund on my original Pandaria purchase!

Brute-force, no-thought-required developer solution for MMO gameplay: make the content suck so much that you're forced to group.
Have we truly reached the point where content that "forces" you to group in an MMO is somehow a sign of this content sucking?

Brute-force, no-thought-required developer solution for MMO gameplay: make the content suck so much that you're forced to group.
Have we truly reached the point where content that "forces" you to group in an MMO is somehow a sign of this content sucking?

I would say, yes. A game should not FORCE you to do anything. It can encourage stuff, but not force. We're finally at the point where (most) people are starting to understand that MMO doesn't mean 'you need to play with people in a group', but simply 'there are a lot of people online that you can play with if you want'. Just like in real life, actually...

"When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods people believe in, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Those who don't spend money on WoW get a free copy of the game. What about the loyal players who keep bleeding money all over Blizzard, what do they get? I wouldn't mind a refund on my original Pandaria purchase!

You really don't know how business works.

-------------------

Hmmm. Warlock changes. Make Fel Flame so expensive its unusable. Buff Incinerate by 5%. Bit of a bandaid fix, but I dislike Fel Flame anyway. And its a minor DPS boost, I think.

I'd rather they removed it, and baked it into Conflaguate somehow. Make it cost a bit more, give it more charges, and boom - there we go, an instant cast spell to use while moving that we can't spam which is actually useful to normal DPS as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Amerissis

I would say, yes. A game should not FORCE you to do anything. It can encourage stuff, but not force. We're finally at the point where (most) people are starting to understand that MMO doesn't mean 'you need to play with people in a group', but simply 'there are a lot of people online that you can play with if you want'. Just like in real life, actually...

What are you forced to do as a group? World bosses and Rares (where you don't even need to actually group up)?

Too much MoP copies hadn't sold, and now a shameful try to get the lost players back with those useless discs. Hahahahahahahahahahaha! MADE MY DAY!
I sold mine to a kid ^^ thy Blizzard the extra cash ^^ Send free 60 days playtime... Not that trash...
This movement makes the normal players force to leave this game once and for all...

But this means = high managers don't like to lose 5-6 million real subs. My bet is in Europe are average 200k palyers online nowadays, it is just 2,5x EvE players.

I would say, yes. A game should not FORCE you to do anything. It can encourage stuff, but not force.

So first person shooters shouldn't force you to shoot? Racing games shouldn't force you to race? Platformers shouldn't force you to jump? :P

I agree though that forced grouping may not be a must these days but it also should not be a must not. It's up to the developer to decide whether they want to force grouping or not. Forced grouping, especially in WoW, creates for a more controllable "holy trinity". Giving the developers more room to tune content difficulty and have more control over how certain scenarios play out.

It's not really a free copy, but just a trial, isn't it? It goes away after the week and you can't level to 86... I think I've had this free trial twice already during MoP, I think it resets every major patch :-D